Only Once
by xxdeath.by.chocolatexx
Summary: //Only once did Bella look at her, but really, that was all it took.// Giftfic for Lioness-of-Tortall-7.


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I

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Once when Bella looked at her, she felt like somebody had lifted her off the ground, because there was really no possible way anyone could be so beautiful. Alice always liked secrets, and she always had a penchant for dark things.

Alice, with her wide eyes and round face, looks like she is made to be broken, and that's really the only reason Bella notices her.

She sits in the Great Hall and stares into those shallow pools of light that beckon her. _Love me, don't hurt me_, they say. Bella loves to hurt, herself and others, and so she begins her twisted affair.

Alice is seduced slowly, because she is too innocent to want anything right away. Actually, she knows she wants _something_, but it takes her some time to realize what it is.

Alice's grades drop when she spends her time imagining what it would feel like if Bella's heavy dark hair brushed over her. Bella remains top in her class—she has played this game before.

Perhaps it was the way Bella looked at her once, but suddenly Alice _knows_. It's like somebody flipped a switch in her mind, and she can now see so clearly that what she wants is at her fingertips.

Whoever flipped that switch apparently didn't think about warning her. If they had, it may have saved a lot of trouble in the end.

They meet in hidden alcoves and Bella leaves her mark on Alice's collarbone, a bite-mark and a small double-B carved into her skin. Slowly the writing extends down her arm, because Bella needs to mark her prey, just in case.

Bella is still in school when she earns or deserves her own mark, a skull and snake that make Alice shudder whenever Bella drops the sleeves of her robes. And like any predator, Bella senses her fear and relishes it, moving in for the kill.

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II

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Alice becomes someone she never wanted to be, but it takes her too long to realize it. By the time she comes to her senses for a period of time long enough to know what is happening, Bella has established complete control over her.

Frank Longbottom is sleeping out in the corridor again, he must have forgotten the password, and Alice tries to step past him quietly, returning from her midnight tryst with Bella. Just as she is tiptoeing over his snoring form, he opens his eyes blearily and asks where she's been.

She tries to run, but he grabs her arm and she winces. A rolled up sleeve and some revealed skin later, Frank knows everything.

Really, he saved her, if she thinks about it now. By spending less and less time with her "girlfriend", whom Frank just referred to as "that bitch", it dawned on her that this was not how a relationship was supposed to be.

Alice is scarred though, and scared. Once upon a time, she was an innocent girl, with eyes that reminded everyone of pools of light that they could gaze into and wonder what would happen if they dove into the shallow blue puddles.

Most likely all that would happen now is that they would crack their head open.

Alice thanks Frank kindly, and feels so indebted to him that three years after they are out of Hogwarts, he drops to one knee and she says _yes_, instead of _but it isn't you I want_.

In the years of their marriage, she nurtures her scars, and never lets them fade, and never forgets the way her life could have gone. She can never decide whether to be thankful or not.

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III

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Many years later, a young Auror from the Ministry finds it his task to interrogate the prisoners of Azkaban, find out why they did whatever they did.

He is shocked, of course, by what he finds in the memories of the prisoners held in Azkaban. But he keeps his cool, and betrays no emotion, until he reaches the cell of one Bellatrix Lestrange.

After a brief glimpse into her mind, he flees Azkaban, immediately drafting his letter of resignation, using words like _digusting, horrifying, _and _vulgar_, to describe what he found.

He retires from his post, moving into a room in a small cottage at the edge of the sea, which he rents from an old lady who never seems to shut up about her grandson, some Neville Longbottom.

When the boy visits for the holidays, he recognizes him immediately—nobody could mistake that face, those eyes—from the memory he is trying to forget to remember.

Even though the eyes the last time he saw them were empty, tortured, reflecting the insane face of the torturer, they were still _hers_.

_Frank is slumped against the wall, and Alice lifts her hands in protest, looking at Bella with those eyes that say,_ I thought you loved me. _Bella hears the words in the eyes, and laughs, a maniacal laugh that echoes off of the walls of the small apartment._

_Bella doesn't love people who betray her, and Alice was the one who left her when she was so ready, _ready_, for the Dark Lord. She was ready to reveal Alice to her leader, her Lord, because Alice was _ready_._

_Bella lifts her wand. Bella loves to hurt, herself and others, and so she ends her twisted affair._

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**A/N: This was a giftfic for Lioness-of-Tortall-7. The prompt was an Alice/Bella fic, starting with their romance at Hogwarts, including Alice's relationship with Frank, and ending with Bella's thoughts as she tortured Alice. This took me FOREVER to write, I'm so sorry to the requester, and anyone else who awaits my stories. It wasn't because it was a hard prompt or anything, I just had no time, and no inspiration. So it was done in bits and pieces. But it ended up being fairly long for one of my stories, and that always makes me happy. I hope you like it! Please review!**

**.chocolate**


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